So, once more the
piano (once owned by Lucy Flucker Knox wife of Major General Henry Knox)
entered a life of warmth and usefulness in the family of Dr. Isaac Bartlett
of Hope. His two children, Mornelva and Westbra learned to play it. It couldn't
have found a better home or a more appreciative reception for the fact of
its historic association with the Knox family was never forgotten during
its fifty-eight years of adoption.

Young Westbra Bartlett
kept a fine daily Journal from 1856 to 1868.
Excerpts from this Journal reveal the story of life in the country and the
social activities of those days. Most of the social gatherings included
the little piano. Possibly it suffered a few indignities such as being "taken
for a ride" in the back of a sleigh or bob-sled, without its legs but
it was built sturdily and survived it all. Needless to say the excellent
condition of the piano legs today is because they stayed at home while the
boxed piano gaily attended parties and dances for which Westbra played the
piano, accompanied by his uncle Orrison and his "fiddle."

The people of that
day worked hard and if they found they could combine 268C
a good deed and still derive pleasure from it was a worthy project.
One of the popular social yet charitable affairs occasionally enjoyed was
a "tax party," namely to assist a worthy widow in paying her taxes.
Refreshments were carried by the surprise guests and during the evening
a collection was "taken up" unobtrusively left for the widow for
her kind hospitality. The little piano gave out merry tunes for both singing
and dancing. Westbra's Journal noted one of these occasions Feb. 5, 1858.
"Had a taxparty" tonight. Went to the Widow Knight's. Had eight
sleighs go."

This brief description was primarily drawn from Anna
Hardy's History of Hope, pages 157 and 158.

Isaac Bartlett was
born in Hope in 1810, son of Daniel Bartlett and is second wife, Eliza A.
Dunton. Daniel Bartlett, of New Ipswich, New Hampshire, was a cousin of
Samuel Appleton. Isaac was a student of Dr. Moses Dakin at Hope Corner.
Isaac married Harriet Harwood of Hope in 1834, and about that time began
the practice of medicine in Hope, being the town's only physician after
the death of Dr. Dakin in 1864. He was interviewed in 1889 by Wilder Perry,
editor of the Camden Herald, at the request of the Boston Globe. The good
Doctor had subsisted on a diet of bread, milk, apples, and occasional vegetables
for most of his life, and was at the time of the interview still in active
practice. This photograph, taken in Camden at the W. V. Lane Studio in Camden
and noting on its face that the Doctor was 80 at the time, was once in the
files of Wilder Perry, and was purchased on 21June 2013 from the Perry descendants
by Donald Burke of Appleton and from him by the Hope Historical Society.
The reverse of the photo bears the penciled note: "1 Col. done Thurs.
PM," indicative of its use in a newspaper article.